HEAD OF THE CLASS SEVEN SEEK ELECTION AS EDUCATION COMMISSIONER IN A STATE THAT RANKS 31ST IN TEACHER SALARIES AND 48TH IN EXPENDITURES PER $1,000 PERSONAL INCOME.

Not since 1974 has there been a vacancy in the state Cabinet post that appropriately could be called Czar of Education.

The person inheriting the mantle of Education Commissioner Ralph D. Turlington will truly get a gigantic responsibility -- educating Floridians as varied as a kindergartner, the handicapped, a dropout, a merit scholar, the community college student, a Ph.D. candidate, the high-tech engineer and the illiterate adult.

The total price? $6.4 billion. That's how much in state and local taxes will be spent this school year on kindergarten through higher education. Education consumes almost $1 of every $3 in the state's $16.5 billion 1986-1987 budget.

"Education generally is the most important factor in Florida's growth," says Sen. Betty Castor, one of the Democratic candidates for the post. "I think education commissioner is the second-most important position in state government."

In grades K-12 alone, enrollment this year is a whopping 1.6 million pupils, instructed by nearly 95,000 teachers.

Yet, Florida's average teacher's salary ranks 31st out of the 50 states, according to the Florida Teaching Profession/National Education Association. The 1985-1986 average starting salary for a K-12 Florida teacher was $15,650.

The state ranks 48th in state and local expenditures for education per $1,000 personal income, says the FTP-NEA, one of the state's two large teachers' unions.

And though the state Department of Education disputes this ranking as unfair, Florida has been designated as 48th in the rate of dropouts.

Who would want this job, which will pay $81,967 as of February? Most voters are undecided -- and probably indifferent -- about who gets it, according to the most recent Florida Newspaper Poll conducted by the News and Sun-Sentinel and two other newspapers.

Three Democrats and four Republicans are competing to replace 65-year-old Turlington, who will retire at the end of his term. (Turlington led the petition effort that put legalization of a state lottery to fund education on this year's ballot.)

Yet only three candidates have mounted substantial well-funded challenges. On the Democratic side, two legislators -- Castor of Tampa and Rep. Larry Hawkins of Perrine -- are running hard. Also in the race is Lee County School Board member Rayma Page.

On the Republican side, former Florida State University president Stan Marshall of Tallahassee is leading a field that also includes three relatively obscure candidates: Naples tax attorney Brian Pappas and two Palm Beach County teachers, Ron Howard and Vince Goodman.

A dropout from the GOP race, Rep. Betty Easley of Largo, was considered a serious contender. But the 14-year legislative veteran opted instead to be the running mate of Republican gubernatorial hopeful Tom Gallagher.

"The most important thing is being a strong advocate and a strong leader," says Castor, endorsed by FTP-NEA and Florida Education Association-United, the two major teachers unions. She's raised about $360,000.

Castor's obvious selling point is authorship of education reforms. It was her 1986 bill that now requires local school districts to draft plans to attack the dropout problem. She pushed legislation allowing college graduates in liberal arts and sciences to take an abbreviated apprentice program and become teachers -- without going through the entire education curriculum.

And she put into the statutes a program giving scholarships to students willing to teach in areas that have an instructor shortage.

Castor rose to the No. 2 president pro tempore post in the Senate -- the first woman to do so -- and has chaired the Senate appropriations committee dealing with education.

A former teacher, ex-administrator and former chairman of the Hillsborough County commission, she has taught one day in 46 schools around the state since starting her campaign last fall. She would continue her temporary teaching if elected.

"I came away with the strong impression that we have some very fine education going on in Florida. If we have one shortcoming, it's in not marketing what we do," Castor says.

She was unfavorably impressed with the physical condition of many schools, where shabbiness is eroding pride in the system, she says.

Hawkins, meanwhile, has been pushing his wheelchair over 1,000 miles -- from Pensacola to his hometown in Dade County -- to catch up with front-runner Castor.

A war veteran whose Vietnam injuries confine him to a wheelchair, Hawkins says there has been a benefit to his sweat and toil on the roads of Florida: "My journey is symbolic of the fact that . . . there are not obstacles to success if you're willing to challenge yourself. I'm going to challenge the education community of this state to a higher standard."

He judges his race to be largely "a referendum on no-pass, no-play," a law Hawkins tried to pass earlier this year that would bar any high school student who flunked one course from participating in extracurricular activities during the next semester. A similar law in Texas has received a lot of attention, especially in its effect on football programs.

"We have to make a decision in Florida whether books come first or extracurricular activities," Hawkins says.

Castor's rebuttal to no-pass, no-play: "It's a bit unfair. Students ought to be able to participate in extracurricular activities if their average score is a good score." She says she would push for a C average to maintain students' eligibility to be in extracurricular programs -- the standard now is a D-plus.

A story in the St. Petersburg Times questioned whether Hawkins has misrepresented his background. But Hawkins says he never claimed to be a practicing member of the bar in Michigan and California as the paper said he had. Such claims are not in his campaign literature. Hawkins graduated from Wayne State University Law School and was an instructor in business law for two years at Miami-Dade Community College.

Since 1978, Hawkins has not held a job other than that of legislator. "I said if I were elected I'd be a full-time legislator. I felt that was an important promise." He's raised about $216,000 for this race.

Page, the other Democrat, paints herself as an outsider who will resist the Legislature's interference in local school matters.

Meanwhile, Marshall, 63, top man at FSU from 1969-1976 and dean of education there from 1967-1969, says he is unique because he has a strong educational background but no political ambition: "My decisions will be based on what is best for the next generation, not winning the next election."

His overridding message is the need for leadership, and he uses the short- lived, now universally disliked merit pay plan for teachers as an example. It was designed to reward only about 3,330 out of about 98,000 teachers with $3,000 stipends -- based on tests, evaluations and advanced training.

"We were saying only 3,300 are good. It came from legislators, their staff, the leaders of teachers unions and a few big business people," Marshall says. "Notice I left out the Department of Education."

Marshall and Castor emphasize a larger activist role for the DOE in education planning and providing data.

Of the other Republicans in the race, fifth-grade teacher Goodman, who's raised less than $1,000, is campaigning on an anti-busing platform, Pappas "will promote teaching standards that discourage self-gratification" and Howard, who teaches social studies at Lantana High School, wants to concentrate on dropouts.